Garden Harvest: fruit

Having inherited a garden crammed with fruit trees, I find at the end of every summer I am overwhelmed with the bounty of fruits from plums to figs to pears. Of course I tend to give most of it away as I find I hardly have time to make jams and pies and chutneys. I feel incredibly guilty of course being a self proclaimed domestic goddess, that I have not got row upon row of gleaming jars of apple butter, plum jam, preserved pears and fig and tomato chutneys. However, I like to make a jar or two of jam and five or six pies to tide the household over the winter months.

Plum Jam.. well of course you need plums; about 3 lbs/1.35kg will make 8 half-pound/225g jars. The plums need their stones to be removed, this is boring, bribe a child to do it for you, one that you can trust with a knife. Add the stoned plums to your nice big jam pot and add the same amount of jam sugar. A touch of lime zest and the juice of one lime will make your jam memorable for all the right reasons. Bring slowly to a rolling boil, and let it boil away for at least 30 minutes. This is not the stage in this recipe to go off to inspect your tomatoes or to get on the phone for a marathon chat with a best girlfriend. No, this is the time you stick to the kitchen, wooden spoon in hand, ensuring that your jam does not stick and that you are angelically spooning off the scum that forms on the top. Getting rid of the foamy scum will give you a nice clear luminous jam. After 30 minutes or so, do the jam set test, put a little of your jam on a chilled saucer, place in fridge to cool. If it wrinkles and leaves a clean path when pushed with your finger it is ready. If not, then boil for a while longer. Your jam jars should be sterilising in the warm oven, get them out, pour in your jam.

Apple Crumble is an old family favourite and here is the recipe I use:

Ingredients

For the crumble

• 300g/10½oz plain flour, sieved pinch of salt
• 175g/6oz unrefined brown sugar
• 200g/7oz unsalted butter, cubed at room temperature
• Knob of butter for greasing

For the filling

• 450g/1lb apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1cm/½in pieces
• 50g/2oz unrefined brown sugar
• 1 tbsp plain flo

• 1 pinch of ground cinnamon

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

2. Place the flour and sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Taking a few cubes of butter at a time rub into the flour mixture. Keep rubbing until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

3. Place the fruit in a large bowl and sprinkle over the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Stir well being careful not to break up the fruit.

4. Butter a 24cm/9in ovenproof dish. Spoon the fruit mixture into the bottom, then sprinkle the crumble mixture on top.

5. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the crumble is browned and the fruit mixture bubbling.

6. Serve with thick cream or custard.

One further recipe using the figs I have in abundance:

Roast figs with honey and yoghurt

Ingredients

· 2 figs

· 2 tbsp honey

· 1 pinch cinnamon

· 50g/1¾oz Greek yoghurt

· 1 orange, segmented

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

1. Cut into the figs to make a cross on the top. Place on a baking sheet and drizzle with the honey.

2. Place into the preheated oven and cook for five minutes.

3. To serve place the figs on a plate with the Greek yogurt and garnish with the orange segments.

How I decorate...

It can start with one simple and beautiful object: that is where the inspiration can come from. Or a view; the way sun shine caresses and sparkles on moving water; or the pureness of a blue clear sky or anything really, anything unexpected can be the jump point for a decorating idea. A favourite inspiration for me has always be looking at other designer's homes.

Homes are places that you have to feel at 'home' in. Your home should welcome you back with open arms, you should feel able to be comforted and happy at home. There is nothing worse than a house that accuses you the minute you walk in..."paint this wall....wash these pots....this hall way is too dark...there is too much clutter here...etc". When you open your front door you want to feel welcomed and this is the starting point when you begin to think about decorating your home...'what feeling do you want to create? And how can you achieve it?' For instance if you want to create a cosy feel it is best to stick to warmer colours. Although it is not impossible to do this with lighter shades, but these are considerations to take into account. It is also important to have a level of authenticity to your home, a level of reality that is only possible to achieve with vintage furniture, paraphernalia, real art work and faded linens and shiny pretty things. Whatever look you go for in your home, let it be real to you and your personality, don't buy your interiors wholesale from furniture stores: think for yourself. Understand your own taste and if it is miles away from recent trends or completely off the wall...if it says home to you then that is the aim.

Making cakes

When I was a child, I would often spend the afternoon in the kitchen with my mum and sisters baking. Mum would make currant buns, heavy rich fruit cakes, pasties and fragrant lemon cakes speckle with poppy seeds. In fact my mother was a superb all rounder, she made ginger beer, lemonade and frizzy strawberry cordial and then to top it all she made all our clothes and still worked a full time job. She basically did it all. At the time I didn't think about the mountain of chores my mother went through every day, I just enjoyed being in the cosy, steamy kitchen with my sisters, stirring the cake mixture or kneading dough.

Now I find myself in much the same place as my mum, but without the blessing of a brace of young daughters to stir cake mixtures, roll out pastry and chatter like blackbirds with me in my kitchen. But even alone, I enjoy spending the day in the kitchen baking. In this modern age with all the demands on women to compete in the job market and be all things from mum to journalist to gardener to business woman, there is a simple pleasure from tying on an apron, getting out a mixing bowl and weighting scales, gathering ingredients and baking. The air in the kitchen becomes heavy with the aromas of vanilla pods, lemon rind, cinnamon, ginger, the toffee smell of dark brown refined sugar and you can almost taste the chocolate lingering like a brief memory of a kiss.

From 'How to Drive a Car.' (1940's)

Riders of pedal cycles are often the source of much worry to the motorist. One would think that the rider of a bicycle would be so very conscious of the flimsiness of his machine and his exposure in the event of a collision that he would be particularly careful to observe scrupulously the rules of the road, but, as a matter of fact, he is often the most reckless of road users. He delights, for instance, in swooping down an exceedingly steep hill at 25 mph, entering the main road in a grand sweep, which takes him right across the path of one line of traffic, and face to face with anything on the other, so that he relies entirely on the skill of other road users and the efficiency of their brakes, while such are the anomalies of our motor laws that he is permitted, head down, with cap hung on the lamp bracket, to dash through villages at 18 miles an hour where red-and-white-painted discs impress the motorist that he will be liable to dire penalties if he exceeds, be it by ever so little, the 10 mph allowed. An Annoying Habit Many cyclists also take pleasure in driving side by side several abreast and obstructing the road entirely to one line of traffic, often obstinately refusing to make way for those wishing to overtake them, so that if there is much traffic coming in the opposite direction - i.e., towards them - the pace of every other road user is set by a few slow cyclists talking as they ride. Verily, cyclists are to be treated with the utmost respect, especially at night, when, scorning even a red reflector which would ensure their safety, they pedal silently along the road, their machines and garments merging into the gloom. The motorist, in order to pick them out, must needs have powerful headlamps, yet, when they see a car with bright headlights, which the driver is compelled to use in order to save their skins, they shout loudly some remarks about road-hogs and dazzling lights. It is a hard life!

Frustrating chores

There is always the day when you find your list of chores are too mind numbingly dreary to complete. Today was such a day. The first a simple task was to complete a job I had started about a month ago: replacing a nasty plastic doorbell with a chrome one. This was of course turned out to be not as simple as I wish. The drill bit was the wrong size, the screw driver had stripped the thread of the screw and a wasp nest was disrupted apparently by my attempts at D.I.Y and a flurry of furious wasps made short work of my desire to continue. Okay I thought, I'll wire the walls for the wisteria which was flopping all over the patio. This job went fine until I discovered the wire was too light weight to support the bulk of the wisteria. A list began to form: Larger drill bit, stronger wire and wasp powder, clearly a trip would be necessary to the hardware store.

Well there was the fence waiting to be painted, it was a job started many weeks ago and was so tedious, so incredibly dull that although I had begun I had only managed to do less than a third and could not bear to continue; so had prevaricated for as long as I could. Well it could be put off no longer... But anther obstacle frustrated my attempts to lay waste to my long 'to do' list: the paint brushes had harden off because the last person to use it had failed to wash it up and put it away properly. (That would be me then,..) With a true sense of relief I put 'paint the fence' back to the bottom of the chore list and added 'new big fence paint brush' on the shopping list.

There was clearly no other option but to go shopping, so I had a bit of a chance to start and finish at least one job this weekend.

Cool and calm

In the heat of summer, it is lovely to have a house that is cool, serene and calm.

Not just a walk

Taking Ruby, the energetic cockerapoo pup, for her daily walks has been a revelation in many ways. She is full of curiosity, inquisitiveness and has a nose set to seek out mischief. Her doggy being simple requires walking and there is no debate. So I have at last been disciplined into taking regular exercise by a dog; simply the best personal trainer anyone could ask for. It is impossible to make excuses for avoiding a brisk walk when your doggy looks so dejected and disappointment sitting by the door, or to resist the keen enthusiasm of a dog straining on the lead, desperate to get out into the big wide world.

Every wind heralds another scent and Ruby charges from aroma to aroma, dashing about in her own world of delicious smells. Walking with Ruby is not a matter of going from A to B, it a thorough exploration of the alphabet!! It is easy though, on walks, to allow your mind much like Ruby's nose to wander. My thoughts are chasing smells, darting from worries to plans to ideas to memories: resting for a second perhaps on a plan or worse, lingering for a while on a worry. In a mere mile I can cover the whole gauntlet of emotions from pleasure to tears to glee to horror and back again.

My dog walking mornings are a wonderful opportunity for emptying my head of petty thoughts and worthless worries and pointless niggles. I can watch Ruby intent on moving forward, seeking out new scents to smell and only occasionally darting back for a second sniff at a lingering whiff. Much like her I have learnt to jettison the crap and move onwards straining on the lead of life. And if occasionally I look back thinking I caught the aroma of the past, I can be forgiven for that.